Posted on 06/17/2004 6:43:29 PM PDT by The Raven
HERNDON, VA – A survey released today by Young America’s Foundation indicates students across the nation overwhelmingly heard from liberal guest speakers during commencement ceremonies.
Using U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of the nation’s top 100 colleges and top 100 universities, Young America’s Foundation found for the eleventh consecutive year that commencement speakers at these prestigious institutions are heavily weighted to the left.
Commenting on the annual study, Young America’s Foundation President Ron Robinson explained, “For eleven years, we’ve shown that college administrators are using commencement ceremonies to send their students off with one more predictable leftist lecture. This year, the most prestigious schools exclude scholars like Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas for the likes of Kofi Annan, Madeleine Albright, Gloria Steinem, and Ralph Nader.”
* The long parade of liberal figures delivering commencement addresses at top schools include Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Duke University; UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at Harvard University; Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell at Lafayette College and Washington & Jefferson College; Clinton lawyer Vernon Jordan at Pennsylvania State University; Presidential candidate Ralph Nader at Bucknell University; World Bank President James Wolfensohn at Brandeis University; United States Senator Joseph Biden at the University of Delaware; and Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall at Oberlin College.
* University administrators’ love of liberal media personalities continues. This year’s cast includes PBS’s Jim Lehrer at Beloit College; Former television news anchor Walter Cronkite at Pomona College; NBC’s Tim Russert at Fordham University; television host Jon Stewart at Princeton University and the College of William & Mary; CNN anchor Judy Woodruff at Smith College and American University; MSNBC’s Chris Matthews at Hobart & William Smith College; New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman at Washington University of St. Louis; NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw at Northwestern University; New York Times columnist Paul Krugman at Haverford College; and actor Robert Redford at Bard College.
* Other notable liberal speakers this year include former Weather Underground member Bernadine Dohrn at Pitzer College; Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman at Drew University; singer Bono at the University of Pennsylvania; feminist leader and author Gloria Steinem at Scripps College; and author Barbara Ehrenreich at Barnard College.
The leftist domination of commencement addresses in 2004 is not an irregularity. In the eleven years that Young America’s Foundation has been tracking them, liberals have dominated while conservatives have generally been excluded. Some schools have an outrageous track record of hosting liberal commencement speakers.
* Yale University hosted (for class day) actress Jodie Foster in 1993, activist Sargent Shriver in 1994, former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke in 1995, actor Henry Winkler in 1996, author David McCullough in 1997, NBC’s Tom Brokaw in 1998, journalist Bob Woodward in 2000, Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2001, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in 2003, and Filmmaker Ken Burns in 2004.
* Tulane University hosted Carter administration official Andrew Young in 1995, cancer researcher Andrea Martin in 1996, Mohammed Ali trainer Ferdie Pacheco in 1997, Clinton administration official Donna Shalala in 1998, Time magazine’s Walter Isaacson in 2000, Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman in 2001, author David Halberstam in 2003, and Senator John Breaux in 2004.
Only one school of the two hundred surveyed decided to host a conservative with a position outside of government or the military. Hillsdale College hosted Edwin Feulner of the Heritage Foundation.
Notably, successful conservative media personalities including Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Tony Snow are absent from the list of commencement speakers at top universities despite FOX’s ratings as the most watched cable news channel. Instead, people like Walter Cronkite, Tim Russert, and Jon Stewart appear on the list each year.
Prominent intellectual conservatives such as William F. Buckley, Jr., Newt Gingrich, Thomas Sowell, and Phyllis Schlafly, are absent from the top school commencements while liberals like Thomas Friedman, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Gloria Steinem frequently speak at top schools’ commencements.
Outside speakers were not the only liberals speakers featured at commencements this year. Several universities instead feature their presidents or a member of the Board of Trustees. Stephen Trachtenberg, President of George Washington University, overtly exemplified his liberal views by stating, “If anybody has a mortarboard, you can move your tassels from right to left, right to left, which is what I hope happened to your politics in the last four years.”
Article would be MORE interesting if they mentioned the average honorarium paid to each of these speakers...
It's amazing that even a respectable minority of university graduates resist the brainwashing sessions that make up their curricula. How did it come to this, and why is it a lost cause? Because it is a lost cause. Nothing we can't work around, mind you, but still a shame that we have to.
>>>Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas
I would pay to hear any of the above - but they sat home. What a shame.
Ah, a member of a terrorist organization. I guess Bin Laden couldn't make it.
The disheartening part of all this is the willingness of so many of the alumni who've attended these colleges to continue to fund these leftist shitholes regardless of the intellectual charlatanism they've perpetrated through the years.
They left out Tulane Law School hosting Janet Reno at commencement in 1999. I was there. It was ugly.
I don't think so .. I heard Scalia and Thomas both spoke at some college somewhere.
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